Waterworks

Waterworks. Waterworks at Columbia Canal. , When the City of Columbia was chartered in 1805, residents supplied their own water. In 1818, Colonel Abram Blanding financed and constructed a water system, pumping water from springs at Seaboard (now Finlay) Park to Arsenal Hill for distribution around the town., Seaboard Park , By 1855, Columbia needed more water than Seaboard Park/ Arsenal Hill system could provide. Waterworks were constructed on the Broad River a round 1855, but the system worked poorly and was destroyed by floods., Canal Waterworks , Today's Canal Waterworks took shape in 1906. Coal fired steam engines pumped water from a 60-million-gallon reservoir through sand filtration to a three million gallon clearwell for distribution around the city. Funded by the State of South Carolina, the final cost of the new plant exceeded the State's annual budget., Service Today , The Canal Plant has undergone six phases of expansion to meet ever-increasing demand. The present capacity of the waterworks is 85 million gallons-per-day. It served customers east of the Broad River and south of I-20., [Captions:] , Photo of Seaboard Park ca. 1919. Now Finlay Park, the original waterworks stood under what is now the United States Post Office., Workers place a 30" water distribution pipe beneath the coagulation basin in 1916. Coagulation is the process of adding chemicals to the water to make the dirt bond together and sink to the bottom. Fresh water is taken off the top of the basin and sent for additional filtering., Engineers survey work being done at the Canal Plant., Workers spray gunite in the bottom of Clearwell 2.